Friday, June 26, 2020

Inspector Javert--Here's What a Chapter 1, First Draft of a Novel Looks Like

I've never done this before, but here goes. 
Dear Readers and Colleague Fiction Writers:
The following is my first draft of Chapter 1 of my novel in progress, Inspector Javert, looks like. My fellow writers know well that Chapter 1 of the published novel may bear little resemblance to what you are about to read. So, here goes:

 

Chapter the First

Javert’s Leap


 

“Do I stand at hell’s threshold?”

“Why might you think that?”

This unseen speaker’s voice had an unexpected air of calm . . . welcome.

“I committed the gravest of all sins. Taking my own life. Now, I must reconcile myself to accept the punishment I deserve.”

“And what might that sin be?”

“In the moment following my discovery of the one true God, whom I had never truly known . . . we wrestled, as Jacob once did with the angel. Through the whole of one night. Having wrestled with the author of an even higher law than the civil code, I could not go back to headquarters—to my life—as if nothing had changed. I might have even found myself one day in prison. What a fall that would be! To end my wretched life where it began. And from which unquestioning adherence to law had rescued me. At the same time, going forward, taking an unmapped step into the future. Impossible. This very night, my last on earth, unleashed within me the folly of my life, the wretched horror of facing another day on earth . . . . I sought  the coward’s way out. Taking my own life. I stand before the throne of my Divine Judge, sir, prepared for my final judgement and punishment.”

“And what do you expect that punishment to be?”

“My sin is between my Creator and me. Whoever you are, I owe you no further discourse.”

Javert’s unknown companion did not respond. “Am I alone again?” the self-condemned new arrival said. “No matter. I prefer no audience for my commission to the pit of flames.”

His companion spoke. “I am sent by God, your Creator and Father, to assure you, my son, that you are safe.”

“Perhaps you misunderstood, so I repeat. I am resigned to my fate.”

The calm, kindly voice repeated his assurance of safe harbor.

Javert rejected deceit. “Come, Divine Judge! I am a man of action. Cause and effect. Why do you delay? Only once in my life of honorable service did I hesitate. Only once violated my sworn duty as  defender of law and right order. See what it cost me! Life. Liberty. Reward for a job well done. Perhaps promotion to the higher positions which I deserved. Until the last evil night. If you delay my punishment, I accept that as punishment begun.”

“What is the last thing you remember?” his companion said.

“Who are you to ask such a question?” Javert had no history of responding to an unknown questioner. He demanded confessions. He carried out punishment proclaimed by a judge, be it jail time or the most feared sentence of all—years spent in the horrors of the galleys. Even death by guillotine paled by comparison to a lifetime in chains.

“Permit me introduce myself.”

The deceitful response came with a tone of respectful humility.

“I am Charles Francois Myriel, late Bishop of the Diocese of Digne. Your fellow countryman. The Divine One whom you recently encountered assigned me to welcome you to Afterlife.”

“After . . . life? Then, I . . . I still live?”

“Quite. But in a form previously unknown to you.”

“A bishop? .  . . . Of the Holy Catholic Church? Surely you mock me. I reject your disguise, Satan! You have met your match. I spent my entire life unmasking deceivers like you.”

“Your caution is reasonable, I assure you. Nonetheless, such was my position in life. Where you go now there is no rank. All are equal.”

“Then, you too are an unrepentant sinner?” Javert said. “We arrive together at the gates of hell to await and share the fire that never consumes.”

“That is what you expect?”

“I do and am resigned to it. What other fate may the likes of us deserve? A failed bishop of the Church and a fallen guardian of the sacred legal codes of France. How we paragons of righteousness have betrayed our vocations!”

“On the contrary, Javert.” Myriel stifled a chuckle. “I assure you we stand not at the edge of the fiery pit. Far from it, it pleases me to report. Exceedingly.”

“Before you confuse me further, I need to ask how you know me, sir? Have we met before?”

“In earth-life?”

“Call it what you will. I am . . . was . . . known for never forgetting a face. I etched indelibly into memory the image of every man, woman, and child who came within my broad purview. Though a man of your own faith, I do not recall your passing my way or ever hearing your name.”

“Correct. We never met, in France or anywhere during our lifetimes. We do, however, share a common acquaintance.”

“Oh? And that might be?”

 Javert disliked word games—or any games. When he demanded a confession, he settled for nothing but raw, unembellished truth. Cheats and liars, every wrongdoer crossing his path spent time in prison, if the feared guillotine did not claim priority.

“The man known to each of us is Jean Valjean, who still walks in Earth time. Surely you recall that name . . . and face, Javert. I met him only once. You two, I believe had a lengthy history ”

Hearing his lifelong nemesis’s name jolted Javert. A flood of memories gushed back in rapid sequence. Their force rendered Javert speechless. Reclaiming his composure, he hissed, “Indeed. I . . . know . . . the man.” After a nightmare-filled pause, he continued, “I despise the very sound of that name. At the same time—and I cannot believe what I am about to say—I cherish it. Never in my life have such contradictory emotions flooded me at the same time, regarding the same person.”

“I must confess,” the bishop admitted, “I have struggled against similar clashes of feelings myself.”

He recalled his years as a young husband exiled in Rome. Sharing life with his new bride. Their mutual, passionate love and the hope of bringing a child into the world. Not long after her death, he felt the call, of all things, to renewal of his Catholic faith and later—and most surprising—to priesthood.

At first, he had shunned the image of himself as celibate priest, seeing in it a betrayal of his lifelong devotion to his life-partner, too soon snatched from him. She took to her grave their most-prized possession. Hope. A desire for children. How he fought the call to ministry! The stronger his effort to deflect God’s call, the more convinced he became that he had already decided to surrender to the insistent invitation. A decision he never regretted. Not that he ceased loving his spouse, whom he lifted up daily in consecration along with the Sacred Bread of Eucharist. He said nothing of this to the newly arrived spirit, called on earth Inspector Javert.

“About this Jean Valjean.” With great difficulty he asked, “Does he live still?”

“I assure you, Javert, he lives.”

Sunday, June 7, 2020

Inspector Javert--Part III, The Third Conversion

Marius Pontmercy and Cosette, as depicted
in an early version of Les Miserables 

We have already seen that Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables as a conversion story.  First, and most obvious is the conversion of Jean Valjean from homeless parolee to giant of a man who lives the rest of his life under various aliases. Funded by Bishop Myriel's valuable silver heirlooms, he adds to his fortune. But, he lives his whole life as a fugitive from (unjust) justice. 

The second conversion we saw in Part II, that of Javert, who wrestles with God and finally gives up the struggle, admitting that his whole life has been a sham. Everything he has struggled to be--a man of law and order--finally comes crashing down on him on the night he does the unthinkable . . . violates the law by releasing his nemesis, Jean Valjean, from custody. 

What happens next can be described as "the point beyond which." Having yielded to his "Higher Power," he sees his only choice to be ending his life. Some might say, he finds God only to then run away by committing suicide. I prefer to think that his conversion is so sudden and powerful that nothing remains on earth for him to be, do, or accomplish that he throws himself from the bank of the River Seine into . . . the loving arms of the same God he has fought against all his life.

But . . . there's a third conversion story up Victor Hugo's authorial sleeve. And that is the good fortune of Marius Pontmercy, husband of Jean Valjean's fosterchild, Cosette. Shortly after their wedding, Jean Valjean revealed to Marius his true identity as the former convict Javert had hunted all his life. Despite the fact that Valjean endowed Marius and Cosette with his entire fortune, Marius still cannot accept him and does everything he can to keep his wife apart from her beloved "father." 

Approached by Thenardier, the ne'er do well scoundrel, bribes Marius to use the money to start a new life (in America). During their heated discussion, Marius learns only by chance that Jean Valjean was the man who saved  his life, after the massacre at the barricade in 1832. Stunned by this news, Marius realizes how wrong, cruel, and ungrateful he has been to Cosette's recuer. He confesses to her and together they rush to Valjean--only to find him on his deathbed.

So, the three "converts" in Les Miserables are Jean Valjean, Inspector Javert, and Marius Pontmercy. The casual reader of Hugo's immortal novel often misses the clues Hugo reveals in the book's Prologue:

"The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end."

Note: Thenardier could have been the fourth convert. Instead, he remained a scoundrel, presumably for the rest of his life. Hugo tells us Thenardier used Marius's money to book passage to America, where he became a slave trader.









Monday, June 1, 2020

Javert Part II--The essence of Les Miserables and Hugo's "hidden" meaning



I have confession to make. I've read Les Miserables cover to cover several times and have studied individual sections of the text a number times over the years. I've seen a number of film and TV versions, both foreign and domestic and seen the musical production several times, both in San Francisco and New York (with another near-miss in London last summer). 


Not until I began researching my next book project (Inspector Javert: Darkness to Light) did I come to realize that Victor Hugo wrote the novel as a conversion story! Here it is in the author's own words as written in the Prologue to Les Miserables:

"The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end."

There it was, right before my unseeing eyes!

Once I saw the author's underlying purpose in writing the 1,000+ word novel, read the text with a different mindset. I realized that, in addition to the most obvious conversion (Jean Valjean), there were not one but two other characters who underwent a major spiritual change in their lives. 

First, there was Javert. In the time following his release of Valjean, after the episode in the Paris sewers, and the time of his famous leap into the River Seine, the Inspector had gone through a long and painful wrestling match with his conscience. The outcome was realization that his whole life had been built on a terrible misunderstanding of right and wrong. Life, he finally saw, was not black-and-white law and order as he had thought. He understood, for the first time in his life, that what he had considered to be punishable vice might, in some way, be virtue.

Javert's conversion was real, but not mature enough to do the work of rebuilding his life. The only way forward, he concluded, was to die. So, he leapt off the embankment into the swirling whirlpool of the Seine. Or did he? I believe he leapt, much to his surprise, into the loving arms of the  God who had never given up on him.

 This reminds me of Francis Thompson's (d. 1907) famous poem of conversion, "The Hound of Heaven." The first stanza sets the scene:

I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
  I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
    Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

(I'll discuss the third and most hidden conversion story in my next blog entry.)  

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P.S.   I'm still searching for the name of the artist who created the image used in this post. 


Don't miss Bishop Myriel: In His Own Words 

"An stunning achievement!" -- Judith Ingram, Forgiving Day by Day